The Man Who Killed Kennedy

by Roger Stone, Mike Colapietro

  After releasing his memoirs, Specter was even more emboldened. “I now call it the Single-Bullet Conclusion,” Specter absurdly wrote in 2000. “It began as a theory, but when a theory is established by the facts, it deserves to be called a conclusion.”53

  Another arduous task of the Commission was proving that Oswald fired the shots. No nitrates (contained in powders in gases when a weapon is discharged) were found on Oswald’s cheek when a paraffin test was conducted following his arrest.

  “Since the paraffin wax seeps deep down in to the pores, it is a very sensitive test,” wrote G. Paul Chambers in his scientific approach to the assassination, Head Shot. “Even washing one’s face prior to the test will not remove all presence of nitrates. As someone who has worked extensively with ball powders, I can tell you that reacted powders have a very distinctive odor, which is difficult to get out of your skin and clothes. The presence of nitrates on Oswald’s hands may indicate that he had fired a revolver, for instance (he was accused of shooting Officer Tippet on the same day as the assassination), however, nitrates could also have gotten on his hands from other sources, such as paper or ink. The absence of nitrates on his cheek is court-admissible evidence, however, that he had not fired a rifle that day.”54

  Another discrepancy in the Oswald story is the weapon found on the sixth floor of the Depository: It was initially reported by police to be a 7.65 German Mauser, a gun that bore a passing resemblance to the Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 Italian carbine, which Oswald owned and allegedly fired. Seymour Weitzman, the deputy constable who, along with Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone, found the rifle on the sixth floor, told the Commission that in regards to firearms, he was “fairly familiar because I was in the sporting goods business awhile.”55

  An affidavit filled out by Weitzman a day after the assassination details his claim of finding the Mauser. “We were in the Northwest corner of the sixth floor when Deputy Boone and myself spotted the rifle about the same time,” Weitzman wrote. “This rifle was a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it.”56

  This description was verified and repeated by officers on the scene, including Deputy Dallas Sheriff Roger Craig:

  Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman had joined us. Wietzman was a gun buff, he had a sporting goods store at one time, and he was very good with weapons. He said it looked like a Mauser, and he walked over to Fritz. Captain Fritz was holding the rifle up in the air and I was standing next to Weitzman, who was standing next to Fritz, and we weren’t any more than six to eight inches from the rifle and stamped right on the barrel of the rifle was ‘7.65 Mauser.’ That’s when Wietzman said “It is a Mauser” and pointed to the ‘7.65 Mauser’ stamp on the barrel.57

  Craig, an officer on the scene, who voiced many contrary viewpoints that challenged the official story, was one of the many witnesses involved intimately with the assassination who died mysteriously—another death from a supposed self-inflicted gunshot wound.58

  When assassination researcher Mark Lane appeared before the Warren Commission, he asked to examine the weapon that had been found on the sixth floor of the Depository. The markings stamped on the side of the rifle clearly identified it with the words “MADE IN ITALY” and “CAL. 6.5”59

  Only one witness claimed to have seen Oswald in the sixth floor window with the rifle. The witness, Howard L. Brennan, saw a man standing at the window and firing. The shooter could not have been standing because the window was open only slightly. It was determined by the Commission that “Although Brennan testified that the man in the window had been standing when he fired the shots, most probably he had been either sitting or kneeling.”60

  The identification by Brennan was used by the Dallas Police Department to identify Oswald as the suspect: “A white male, approximately thirty years of age, approximately six feet tall, approximately 165 pounds, wearing a white shirt and khaki pants.”61

  The description, which was wholly inaccurate in describing Oswald’s attire, led to his capture within an hour.

  “He was not wearing a white shirt and khaki pants,” said assassination researcher Mary Ferrell. “He was wearing a dark reddish-brown shirt—I’ve held it in my hands at the Archives. It had a slight—a reddish thread, and a gold thread, kind of a plaid—but it was very dark. And he wasn’t wearing khaki trousers. He was wearing brown wool trousers.”62

  Another failure of the Commission was proving that Oswald could have gotten off three shots accurately in the 5.6 seconds that were alleged.

  Three professional marksmen with a rank of Master given by the National Rifle Association were appropriated with the purpose of recreating the shots made by Oswald.63

  In comparison to the professionals, Oswald seemed to have poor hand-eye coordination and trouble with dexterous tasks. He showed incompetence when handling firearms, once as a Marine dropping a loaded pistol inside a barracks, causing it to fire.64 Oswald registered as a “rather poor shot” in his last rifle test prior to the assassination.65 He could not drive a motor vehicle and was fired from a job at a graphic arts plant in Dallas earlier in the year of the assassination for ineptness.

  “He just couldn’t see to do anything right,” stated his employer. “Oswald seemed to have trouble producing the exact sizes called for.”66

  Yet Oswald had allegedly hit President Kennedy once through the head and once through the throat in 5.6 seconds with a rifle deemed poor in terms of accuracy with a scope not properly sighted when discovered by Dallas police. The expert marksmen, in turn, each firing two series of shots with three shots apiece, could not once hit the neck or head on a stationary target.67 Additionally, only one of the marksmen could get the shots off in the minimum time alleged.68

  These results did not deter the findings of the Commission, which concluded that “The various tests showed that the Mannlicher-Carcano was an accurate rifle and that the use of a four-power scope was a substantial aid to rapid, accurate firing … Oswald had the capability to fire three shots, with two hits, within 4.8 and 5.6 seconds.”69

  The results of the Warren Commission rifle tests compounded with the failure of all subsequent attempts to recreate the shooting further embolden the illusion of Oswald as the lone gunman. A CBS recreation of the shooting was attempting in 1967 using eleven expert marksmen. Not one of them was able to score two hits on the moving target on the first attempt, and only four of the eleven scored two hits on further attempts.70

  The Discovery Channel show Mythbusters attempted to validate the “Magic Bullet Theory.” In a recreation, two replica torsos of President Kennedy and Governor Connally were created by Anatomical Surrogates Technology, a company that creates life-like body parts containing artificial bones and flesh. Marks were made on the bodies where the shots had entered, Kennedy’s on the right upper back and Connally in the right back range underneath his armpit. Thehe replica torsos were lined up and positioned as they were in the presidential limousine. A gel-block embedded with artificial wrist bones and a similar thigh block represented Connally’s arm and leg.

  The shot fired in the test, on a non-moving target, went through Kennedy’s back, through Connally and his wrist, bouncing off the thigh block. It was proclaimed a success by the Mythbusters team.

  “Our shot has almost exactly duplicated the path of the magic bullet,” stated narrator Robert Lee.71

  In reality, the recreation did more to debunk the theory than to prove it. Setting aside that the bullet did not embed in the thigh block, the projectile was bent and mangled following the test, much different than the pristine shape of Commission Exhibit 399. The path of the bullet on the Mythbusters recreation was also much different from the one advanced by the Warren Commission. The Mythbusters bullet entered Kennedy in the upper-right portion of the back from the angle and distance of the Book Depository sniper’s nest and exited in the front middle of his chest, nowhere near the neck—a path consistent with reality.

  Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles Police D
epartment detective who rose to prominence with his investigations in relation to the O. J. Simpson trial, in his book A Simple Act of Murder, noted its impossibility and dismissed the “Magic Bullet Theory” completely. In Fuhrman’s opinion, three bullets hit the occupants of the limousine.72

  The convoluted Warren Commission had been called a failure for the ages, but in truth, it couldn’t have been more of a success. The bending of facts, disposal of evidence, and disregard of the truth had distorted the reality of the assassination, allowing the true culprits of the crime not to slip away but to stay precisely where they were, in the highest reaches of government.

  President Nixon would also doubt the findings of the Commission. He called the FBI on May 15, 1972 after Alabama Governor George Wallace had been shot by a deranged gunman in Maryland. The FBI’s number-two man Mark Felt answered the president’s call:

  “Bremer, the assailant is in good physical shape,” Felt said. “He’s got some cuts and bruises, and—“Good!” said Nixon. “I hope they worked him over a little more than that.”

  Felt laughed. “Anyway, the psychiatrist has examined him,” he said, adding, “We’ve got a mental problem here with this guy.”

  Nixon wanted to make one thing perfectly clear. “Be sure we don’t go through the thing we went through with the Kennedy assassination, where we didn’t really follow up adequately. You know?”73

  Mark Lane, one of the original investigators of the assassination and a critic of the Warren Commission, cut to core of its faulty proceedings in his second testimony in front of it. He addressed general counsel Rankin:

  There are 180 million Americans in this country. I am perhaps the only one who is a private citizen who has taken off the last six months to devote all of his efforts to securing whatever information can be found and to making that known to this Commission, and publicly to the people of this country at great personal cost in terms of the harassment that I have suffered, in terms of the terrible financial losses that I have suffered. And to sit here today, after six months of this work, which I have given all to this Commission, voluntarily, and again have come here again today voluntarily to give you this information, and to hear you say that I am not cooperating with the Commission, and I am going to do harm to the country by not making information available to you astonishes me. You have hundreds of agents of the FBI running all over the Dallas area—agents of the Secret Service, Dallas policemen. Are you telling me that in one trip to Dallas where I spent something like two days, I uncovered information which the whole police force of this nation has not yet in six months been able to secure? I cannot believe that is a valid assessment of this situation. I cannot, Mr. Rankin.74

  NOTES

  1. O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History, pg. 170.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid, pg. 176.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Beschloss, Taking Charge, pg. 22.

  6. Ibid, pg. 51.

  7. Marrs, Crossfire, pg. 61.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Commission Document 1 – FBI Summary Report, pg. 1.

  10. Commission Document 1 – FBI Summary Report, pg. 18.

  11. Chambers, Head Shot, pgs. 154–155.

  12. Beschloss, Taking Charge, pg. 62.

  13. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 5

  14. Beschloss, Taking Charge, pg. 52.

  15. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 274.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Janney, Mary’s Mosaic, pg. 301.

  18. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 274.

  19. North, Act of Treason, pgs. 508–509.

  20. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pgs. 553–554.

  21. Novak, The Prince of Darkness, pgs. 210–211.

  22. Pr News Channel, “Book Publisher: President Ford Knew of CIA Coverup in Kennedy Assassination”, November 27, 2007. www.prnewschannel.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=141.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid, pg. 560.

  25. Epstein, Inquest, pg. 38.

  26. Nelson 443.

  27. Talbot, pg. 282.

  28. De Mohrenschildt, “I am a Patsy!, I am a Patsy!”

  29. Ibid.

  30. Lane, Rush To Judgement, pg. 39.

  31. Kelin, pg. 213.

  32. Ibid, pg. 215.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid, pg. 238.

  35. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 365.

  36. Marrs, Crossfire, pg. 80.

  37. Turner, “The Men who Killed Kennedy.”

  38. Epstein, Inquest, pg. 60.

  39. Fuhrman, A Simple Act of Murder, pg. 125.

  40. Warren Commission Testimony of Ronald Jones.

  41. Assassination Records Review Board, Examination of Ronald Jones.

  42. Marrs, Crossfire, pg. 483.

  43. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 274.

  44. Ibid, pg. 299.

  45. Ibid, pg. 300.

  46. Post Gazette.com, November 16, 2003.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Fuhrman, A Simple Act of Murder, pg. 179.

  50. Ibid, pg. 157.

  51. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 355.

  52. Ibid, 469.

  53. Ibid, 473.

  54. Chamber, G. Paul, Head Shot, pgs. 171–172.

  55. Warren Commission Testimony of Seymour Weitzman.

  56. Affidavit of Seymour Weitzman, jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/04/0433-001.gif.

  57. Lane, “Two Men in Dallas” 1976.

  58. Autopsy Report of Roger Craig, mcadams.posc.mu.edu/craig_autopsy.htm.

  59. Lane, Rush to Judgment, pg. 115.

  60. Kelin, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 108.

  61. Kelin, pg. 108.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Lane, Rush to Judgment, pg. 126.

  64. North, Act of Treason, pg. 212.

  65. Lane, Rush to Judgment, pg. 126.

  66. North, Act of Treason, pg. 212.

  67. Lane, Rush to Judgment, pg. 127.

  68. Ibid.

  69. Ibid, pg. 128.

  70. Griffith, Michael T.; 7/03/01, “How Long Would the Alleged Lone-Gunman Have Had to Fire?”

  71. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRUNYZY71g.

  72. Fuhrman, A Simple Act of Murder, pgs. 207–209.

  73. Weiner, Tim, Enemies: A History of the FBI, pg. 308.

  74. Warren Commission testimony of Mark Lane.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  AT LAND’S END

  It was just past 5:30 in the late afternoon of the president’s death, and former First Brother Bobby Kennedy was waiting for Air Force One. Kennedy, who had arrived at Andrews Air Force Base a short time before, had isolated himself in the back of a canvas-covered US Army transport truck close to the runway but far enough away from the reporters, legislators, and military personnel littering the base. Kennedy was alone, waiting for Jackie and what remained of his brother.

  “Kennedys never cry” was a hard lesson his father, Joe Sr., had extolled to his children when they were growing up. For Bobby, the most temperamental of the brothers, this was particularly tough. In his lifetime, the younger Kennedy had suffered the loss of his older brother Joe Jr. and his sister Kathleen, both in tragic plane accidents, both of which could have been avoided with more thoughtful planning. His sister Rosemary was alive in body alone, her mind permanently regressed to that of a five-year-old due to an ill-advised frontal lobotomy. John’s death was different: Bobby felt responsible. He had made it his goal as attorney general to fight the forces that he considered evil: organized crime, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the CIA, and his nemesis Lyndon Johnson. Bobby’s endgame was not only to battle these forces but to vanquish them. In the end, it was a game of survival at all costs.

  “I thought they would get one of us,” Bobby had told his aide Ed Guthman shortly after the assassination. “But Jack, after all he’d been through, never worried about it. I thought it would be me.”1

  Bobby no doubt felt tremendous guilt over t
he death of his brother.

  “My own feeling was that Bobby was worried that there might be some conspiracy, and that it might be his fault,” RFK’s man Katzenbach said. “I think the idea that he could be responsible for his brother’s death might be the most terrible idea imaginable. It might very well have been that he was worried that the investigation would somehow point back to him.”2

  At 6:00 p.m., Air Force One descended onto the runway, ending the 1,300-mile journey from Dallas. Bobby removed himself from his cloistered safe haven in the back of the truck and made his way to the aircraft as it landed. With the mobile stairway in place, he frantically made his way up and into the plane.

  Lyndon Johnson, noticing Bobby making his way to the rear of the plane, extended his hand and his sympathies.

  “Bob,”3 Johnson said with his hand outstretched.

  Bobby moved right past the president without a handshake or recognition of his new boss, his emotions guiding him to his brother and Jackie. Johnson, unsympathetic to the toughest day in Bobby’s life, was outraged by Kennedy’s perceived rebuff.

  “He ran, so that he would not have to pause and recognize the new president,”4 Johnson said.

  This slight would later add fuel to the embittered rivalry between Kennedy and Johnson, but at that moment, Bobby was not concerned with the jilted feelings of his new commander-in-chief.

  “Politics is a noble adventure,”5 were the last words John had said to Bobby before leaving for Dallas. Bobby had begun the day of his brother’s death with such intentions.

  He spent the morning as he had spent many as attorney general: planning the dissolution of organized crime. The meeting of the organized crime section took place in Bobby’s office and covered the types of corruption that the Justice Department was looking to end: Mafia-infiltrated labor unions, illegal gambling, and private businesses. The meeting also covered the innovative methods that the department was using to round up those suspected of crookedness.